Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places

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yellow boxes access

A (probably unrelated) problem I am having is that the wp:NRHPPROGRESS-associated yellow boxes (i.e. that let you see which items in a NRHP county list-article are the NRIS-only ones, etc., for those who have [enabled it in their account, as described at wp:NRHPHELP#NRHP stats reading) are not coming up for me. And this [is also required for me and others who perhaps have more script stuff installed] to access to the "update" button at wp:NRHPPROGRESS, too.This has long not worked reliably in Chrome, but it also is not working in Microsoft Edge browser. If it was working, I would run the script to update wp:NRHPPROGRESS, which i and a few other editors update occasionally.--Doncram (talk) 21:00, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

The yellow boxes and the NRHPPROGRESS script are working for me now in Microsoft Edge browser. Who knows what is different today. I do have to purge the page to get these to work on any given page (which can be done by clicking on a clock gadget (described now at wp:NRHPHELP#NRHP stats reading; also was discussed at wt:NRHPPROGRESS). --Doncram (talk) 21:02, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

My version of the script works somewhat more reliably than Dudeman's. I suspect it has to do with changes in Javascript that have deprecated some of his usages. Magic♪piano 22:07, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I noted the option now wp:NRHPHELP#NRHP stats reading. Switching to that makes the difference now for me to be able to get access to the NRHPPROGRESS script (after i purge the wp:NRHPPROGRESS page, in Microsoft Edge) .... err, it did for a second, but when I went away and came back, it doesn't work. I don't know if that was intended/expected to fix yellow boxes display in NRHP county list-articles. Right now it is not working to get the yellow boxes to show on one of those. Argh. --Doncram (talk) 22:21, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

I haven't had access for weeks now. User:Magicpiano has updated the wp:NRHPPROGRESS page several times since 1 September, and they have also updated the maps, but I think it is working out to be less often than when they and I both were occasionally updating the page and the maps (though I did the latter less often). To partially address the problem, I would like to make request at wp:BOTREQUEST and perhaps elsewhere for a bot to run the NRHPPROGRESS update script daily. And perhaps for it to generate the maps daily too, which surely a program could do. Another request there would be for programming support to enhance the system so that the yellow boxes work again, which is a different issue. Further requests there could be for a programmer to move on to other enhancements of the system, e.g. perhaps to track the number of coordinates which have been verified by editors as opposed to being provided by NRIS2013a (which would involve making another column in the NRHPPROGRESS system). Or for programmers to consider alternative approaches delivering the same functionality, perhaps different than the yellow boxes system if there is some fundamental flaw in that (I am not that much of a programmer to know). I think we could use some additional programming support. Magicpiano, others, would that be okay to ask for some specific help plus additional, general help? --Doncram (talk) 03:22, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't see why these statistics need to be updated daily; seems a lot like overkill, unless I see a groundswell of support for the idea. And when you say "I haven't had access", what exactly are you referring? (Yellow boxes? progress updating? map updating? Please be specific which things are and aren't working for you.) Magic♪piano 16:24, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

I haven't had access: the "update now" boxes at wp:NRHPPROGRESS doesn't show for me in Chrome or in Edge browser, so I can't run either the main updating script or the script that updates map material. Also the yellow boxes don't show for me anywhere, so it is harder for me to find "NRIS-only" articles to fix up. It's my impression that no one is getting access, basically. If it is a bot running it, I don't see why the main updating shouldn't be daily, like other bots do, e.g. wp:Daily Disambig, running presumably on some server with plenty of capacity for it, in the middle of the night. I myself was fairly often been running the updater on a nearly daily basis, partly for my own sake in seeing whether i had brought various counties over 40% articled or quality thresholds, say, when privately campaigning to fix up a given state; i figure it is likewise useful feedback for anyone else who has just made an effort, to see the numbers change.

An alternative to the yellow boxes system, at least for finding NRIS-only sites to fix, would be to have a bot put in state-specific categories (it could be an entirely separate bot than any in the current system). Originally when the system was set up I thought it would be obvious we'd have such categories, but there was inexplicable-to-me conflict about having them. But also one can run Petscan, e.g. this application of Petscan to Oklahoma which currently finds 30 NRIS-onlies. A Colorado campaign between me and another editor, informed by Petscan report, just finished getting rid of all of Colorado's NRIS-onlies, by the way. I am not sure about other functionality of the yellow boxes system that is important to anyone, e.g. whether anyone uses it to identify stubs needing improvement to start or not. With some attention paid to possibly creating other county-specific categories, perhaps it would be feasible/sensible to get rid of the yellow boxes system altogether, i.e. maybe it is not worth trying to make it work any longer, I am really not sure. --Doncram (talk) 01:26, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

First: I do not have access to Edge, so I cannot directly diagnose your problems there in detail, unless you (or someone else with access to Edge) can run tests for me with the developer console open and report on its contents. As a general rule, there are several factors that I am aware of at play. Things have been changing in the Mediawiki framework API that is needed to make some of these functions behave, and browsers are also changing behaviorally. I know these have affected Firefox, Chrome, and Chromium, which I use, particularly in the means by which the controls (the yellow box and the buttons for activating things) are manifested. (These systemic changes, by the way, will eventually irrevocably break Dudeman's copies of these scripts, so anyone who cares should switch to using mine.) If you repeatedly reload a page, do the controls eventually appear? Magic♪piano 01:31, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Reloading and purging, repeatedly, make no difference. I have also completely turned off my computer and have cleared Chrome browsing history and so on, a few times in the last few weeks. I simply cannot get yellow boxes or those "update now" boxes to show, in Chrome and in Edge (which tended to work more reliably in the past). There was another script which I would occasionally run, too, the one counting and listing NRIS-only articles by original author; this has failed to work for a longer time, several months at least, when I have tried occasionally. --Doncram (talk) 02:06, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

I have made a change to the NRHPstats script that may change the behavior you see. Please open an NRHP list page in Chrome. If you do not see the yellow box, open the web console (it should be on the browser main menu->Web Developer->Web Console), press reload, and report the console contents. (You can try the same thing in Edge, but I don't know how to get to its console.) Magic♪piano 03:29, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Right, okay, in Chrome at a list-article, i hit purge, i still see no yellow box, and I look for that. There is no Web Developer in the browser. I look under "Settings" and also under "More tools". Under "extensions" in the latter I toggle "Web developer" to ON, see nada, toggle it back. Trying Google Chrome Help, i search on "where is Web console" and find it is apparently part of Chrome DevTools package, and i worry that is something i will have to install. Per this, apparently in Windows hitting "ctrl-shift-J" will open a console, and it does. Okay, i saw something like that before. Okay, going back, I find that in fact under "More tools", there is in fact "Developer tools", which opens up with the "Elements" panel displayed, and I can click on "Console" panel to get to the same place that ctrl-shift-J gets to. Anyhow, the console panel shows the following error message:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'addPortletLink' of undefined
   at <anonymous>:1:206
   at domEval (load.php? debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector:11)
   at runScript (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector:13)
   at enqueue (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector:11)
   at execute (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector:14)
   at doPropagation (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector:8)

The message actually includes display "National_Register_of_Historic_Places_listings_in_Brooke_County,_West_Virginia:1 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read" too, but that doesn't copy-paste together with the rest.

--Doncram (talk) 19:41, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Please try again. (It should be sufficient to just shift-reload the page with the console open.) Magic♪piano 20:11, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Okay, here it is, now while I am at this list-article, again after purging. The first line below was shown the other time too, but i didn't copy it, it doesn't seem to indicate an error.

JQMIGRATE: Migrate is installed with logging active, version 3.0.1
VM178:1 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'addPortletLink' of undefined
   at <anonymous>:1:206
   at domEval (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector:11)
   at runScript (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector:13)
   at enqueue (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector:11)
   at execute (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector:14)
   at doPropagation (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector:8)

This time there is display of "VM178:1", all underlined, which doesn't copy-paste with the rest, and it doesn't display the name of the list-article this time. --Doncram (talk) 20:20, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks again. I'm wondering if this might be caused by something else in your vector.js or common.js. Can you at least temporarily reduce the content of these files to only load NRHPstats? Magic♪piano 20:29, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Well, golly gee, it works now, I can see yellow boxes, after deleting all other contents of common.js and vector.js.

Perhaps the conflict was most likely with stuff I had in my vector.js about a linkclassifier, from User:Anomie, I am guessing because one line shows the "addPortletLink" term mentioned in error message. Those lines were:

LinkClassifierOnDemand=true;                 //LinkClassifier mentioned at DPL bot by JaGa --this is skin-specific
importScript('User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js'); // Linkback: User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js
importStylesheet('User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css'); // Linkback: User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css
mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', 'javascript:LinkClassifier.onDemand()', 'Link Classifier');

Nope, when I restore the other stuff, the yellow boxes don't work, so the linkclassifier stuff does not appear to be the problem. And I see the "addPortletLink" term appears elsewhere, too, in my commons.js usage of User:Dr_pda/prosesize.js. Okay trying now again with just deletion of dudeman-related stuff in my common.js, i.e. leaving out

mw.loader.load('/w/index.php?title=User:Dudemanfellabra/UpdateNRHPProgress.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');   // try NRHPprogress updater, 5/27/2017 per , yay it worked in Microsoft Edge, took 17 minutes to run.
mw.loader.load('/w/index.php?title=User:Dudemanfellabra/NRHPmap.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');   // try NRHP map maker, guessing 5/28/2017, from finding NRHPmap.js file
mw.loader.load('/w/index.php?title=User:Dudemanfellabra/NRHPProgressHistory.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript'); // try NRHP progress history to generate datafile for line graphs
mw.loader.load('/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress/NRISonlyEditors.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript'); // try NRIS-only author reporting

which plausibly competed with the Magicpiano item in my vector.js

importScript('User:Magicpiano/NRBot/NRHPstats.js'); // Try just Magicpiano's update version instead, per wp:NRHPHELP NRHP stats reading

Hmm, not working, but I am unsure if I need to restart browser, will try that. --Doncram (talk) 22:47, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Okay, with further trial and error, it seems I need to eliminate both the LinkClassifier and the Prosesize items (which both used "addPortletLink"), for the yellow pages to work, and happily the yellow pages now seem to work in Chrome reliably, knock on wood (at least if I push "purge"). And it seems that everything else i was using, e.g. DYKcheck is okay with respect to yellow boxes. In this process i never found the wp:NRHPPROGRESS "run me now" type scripts to be available, and I am stopping now with the above dudeman items back in. Please advise if any of those should be changed to a Magicpiano version. Thank you for your persisting to solve the yellow boxes aspect at least, here. --Doncram (talk) 23:07, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

P.S. The wp:NRHPPROGRESS "update statistics" and "generate SVG output" buttons now work for me in Edge, tho not Chrome. And also for the "which editors created these?" at User:NationalRegisterBot/NRISOnly/All, but now I recall the problem there seemed to be about getting the script to finish, i.e. getting an output window to open up, when it would be better if the script would just write the results to a page. Yeah, I think the script "finished" but gives no results there again now. --Doncram (talk) 02:26, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Good to know your troubleshooting unearthed likely culprits (although I have no problems with Prosesize in my usage). As I mentioned above, Dudeman's script are eventually going to break, due to their use of Mediawiki methods and techniques that are deprecated now, and by behavioral changes in browser implementations that affect script invocation. I've made copies of most of his NRHP-related code at User:Magicpiano/NRBot, and have gradually been updating code that is affected. These should be preferred to Dudeman's versions. Magic♪piano 02:49, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Okay, thank you, using that NRBot page's mentions I have now updated my UpdateNRHPProgress.js and NRHPmap.js to your two versions of those, and I find that I can see the "update me now" buttons for both of them at wp:NRHPPROGRESS using Chrome now, yay! Just noting, not complaining, that your NRBot page does not address, from dudeman's scripts that I know about, NRHPProgressHistory.js (which would retrieve info from NRHP progress history to generate datafile for line graphs of progress) and NRISonlyEditors.js (wikiblame for NRIS-only authors). The first never finished for me, the second did finish a couple times, and both were trying to generate output to a new window that would never open, I believe. Both seemed interesting. I wonder if the NRIS-only blame one might be adapted to report positively on Start level achieved or upon coordinates improved; I do think editors respond positively to getting credit for their positive accomplishments (and sometimes they don't mind getting negativish reports on what they've done too), but doing anything with them would be for someone else, not me. --Doncram (talk) 03:21, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Covered bridges

Here are all of the NRHP-listed covered bridges lacking articles, as far as I can tell: about 50 redlinks, out of about 500 listed. These are highly deserving of coverage, IMHO, more so than auto dealership buildings, say, but no one has been trying to complete out our coverage, at least not recently. More in Ohio than anywhere else; also Georgia, Kentucky and scattered others.

These are all the hits on "covered bridge" in NRIS version 2013a which are redlinks, plus others found by review of lists of NRHP bridges in each state. This possibly misses a few newer listings or ones both without the explicit term "covered bridge" in their NRHP name and without any indication of type of bridge in NRHP bridge lists such as the PA one. No changes since a month ago, when I developed out this worklist, working here. Perhaps a push could be done to finish them out? --Doncram (talk) 22:18, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Plus I added a number of redlinks from List of covered bridges in Ohio, which I had reviewed and decided were not NRHP-listed, but which I want to confirm are not NRHP-listed. These probably deserve articles anyhow, which might be created in the process of developing info about them. There aren't NRHP nomination documents available for the Ohio NRHP ones, although many of the Ohio ones are covered in the Ohio Historic Places Dictionary (see wp:NRHPHELPOH). However the online version of that book gives only selective previews for me. It would be great if anyone with the book could develop out some of these articles more. For both NRHP and non-NRHP ones in Ohio, there are an assortment of Bridgehunter and blog sites and even some Youtube videos, though. --Doncram (talk) 17:07, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

California

1. Knight's Ferry Bridge, Stanislaus County, California
2. Glen Canyon Covered Bridge, Santa Cruz CA

Georgia

1. White Oak Creek Covered Bridge, Alvaton GA
2. Kilgore Mill Covered Bridge and Mill Site, Bethlehem GA
3. Cromer's Mill Covered Bridge, Carnesville GA
4. New Salem Covered Bridge, Commerce GA
5. Kesler Covered Bridge, Homer, GA
6. Ruff's Mill and Concord Covered Bridge, Smyrna GA
7. Auchumpkee Creek Covered Bridge, Thomaston GA
8. Elder's Mill Covered Bridge and Elder Mill, Watkinsville GA
9. Red Oak Creek Covered Bridge, Woodbury GA

Kentucky

1. Bennett's Mill Covered Bridge, Greenup KY
2. Mount Zion Covered Bridge, Mooresville KY
3. Oldtown Covered Bridge, Oldtown KY
4. Switzer Covered Bridge, Switzer KY

Missouri

1. Burfordville Covered Bridge, Burfordville MO

New Jersey

1. Covered Bridge Historic District, Delaware Township NJ

Ohio

1. Barkhurst Mill Covered Bridge, Chesterhill OH; Marion Township, Morgan County, 1872, also known as Williams Covered Bridge
2. Belle Hall Covered Bridge, Croton OH
3. Bennett Schoolhouse Road Covered Bridge, Minford OH
4. Blackwood Covered Bridge, Athens OH
5. Bowman Mill Covered Bridge, New Reading OH
6. John Bright Covered Bridge, Baltimore OH
7. Buckeye Furnace Covered Bridge, Wellston OH
8. Byer Covered Bridge, Byer OH
9. Helmick Covered Bridge, Blissfield OH
10. Helmick Mill Covered Bridge, Malta OH
11. Hizey Covered Bridge, Pickerington OH
12. Johnson Road Covered Bridge, Petersburg OH
13. Kidwell Covered Bridge, Truetown OH
14. Kirker Covered Bridge, West Union OH
15. Knowlton Covered Bridge, Rinards Mills OH
16. Martinsville Road Covered Bridge, Martinsville OH
17. Newton Falls Covered Bridge, Newton Falls OH; also known as Arlington Boulevard Covered Bridge (the second oldest covered bridge in Ohio)
18. Otway Covered Bridge, Otway OH
19. Palos Covered Bridge, Glouster OH
20. Parker Covered Bridge, Upper Sandusky OH
21. Parks Covered Bridge, Chalfunts OH
22. Reed Covered Bridge, Marysville OH
23. Rinard Covered Bridge, Marietta OH
24. Roberts Covered Bridge, Eaton OH
25. Rock Mill Covered Bridge, Rock Mill OH
26. Salt Creek Covered Bridge, Norwich OH
27. Scottown Covered Bridge, Scottown OH
28. Swartz Covered Bridge, Wyandot OH

Additional Ohio redlink ones to check from List of covered bridges in Ohio, which might not be NRHP-listed ones, which failed in earlier searching to match with NRHP names)

1. Armstrong Covered Bridge, Cambridge, Guernsey County, 1849, also called Clio Covered Bridge, NRHP-listed?
2. Baker Covered Bridge, West Rushville, Fairfield County, 1871, also called R.F. Baker Bridge, NRHP-listed?
3. Bay Covered Bridge, McArthur, Vinton County, 1876, also known as Tinker Covered Bridge, NRHP-listed?
4. Brown Bridge, New Hope, Brown County, 1880, over the White Oak Creek, NRHP-listed?
5. Buckeye Covered Bridge, Millersport, Fairfield County, NRHP-listed?
6. Charlton Mill Road Bridge, Wilberforce, Greene County, 1883, over Massies Creek. NRHP-listed?
7. Christman Bridge, Eaton, Preble County, 1895, over Sevenmile Creek. NRHP-listed?
8. Dixon Branch Covered Bridge, Lewisburg, Preble County, 1887, Moved from Salem Road (1/4 mile south) over Twin Creek. NRHP-listed?
9. Glen Helen Covered Bridge, Yellow Springs, Greene County, 1886, also called Cemetery Road Covered Bridge, moved to Little Miami River in 1975. NRHP-listed?
10. George Miller Road Covered Bridge, Byrd Township Brown County 1879 Over the West Fork of Eagle Creek. NRHP-listed?
11. Germantown Covered Bridge, Germantown, Montgomery County, 1865, Bowstring suspension bridge of iron over Little Twin Creek. NRHP-listed? Formerly NRHP-listed.
12. Hanaway Covered Bridge, Madison Township, Fairfield County, 1901, also called Clearport Covered Bridge, over Clear Creek. NRHP-listed?
13. Harshman Bridge, Eaton, Preble County, 1894, Over Four Mile Creek. NRHP-listed?
14. Hartman Number Two Covered Bridge, Lockville, Fairfield County, 1888, also called Lockville Park Covered Bridge, Over the Ohio Canal. NRHP-listed?
15. Johnston Covered Bridge, Revenge, Madison Township, Fairfield County, 1887, Howe truss over Clear creek. NRHP-listed?
16. Jon Raab Covered Bridge, Colfax, Fairfield County, 1891. NRHP-listed?
17. Lockport Covered Bridge, Lockport Williams County 1999. NRHP-listed?
18. McCafferty Road Covered Bridge, Vera Cruz, Brown County, 1877. NRHP-listed? Apparently not NRHP-listed.
19. McCleery Covered Bridge, Lancaster, Fairfield County, 1864. NRHP-listed.
20. Mink Hollow Covered Bridge, Madison Township, Fairfield County, 1887, Over Arney Run. NRHP-listed?
21. New Hope Covered Bridge New Hope, Brown County, 1878, Replaced the 1872 bridge over White Oak Creek. NRHP-listed?
22. North Pole Road Covered Bridge Ripley, Brown County, 1875, also called Iron Bridge, over Eagle Creek. NRHP-listed?
23. Roley School Covered Bridge, Lancaster, Fairfield County, 1899, at the county fair ground. Not NRHP-listed.
24. Scofield Covered Bridge, Brown County, 1875, Multiple kingpost with arch over Beetle Creek. NRHP-listed?
25. Shreyer Covered Bridge, west of Baltimore, Fairfield County, 1891. NRHP-listed?
26. Stevenson Road Covered Bridge Xenia, Greene County, 1877, Over Massies Creek. NRHP-listed?
27. Walter F. Ehrnfelt Bridge Strongsville, Cuyahoga County, 1983, Over East Branch of the Rocky River in the Mill Stream Run reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks. NRHP-listed?
28. Warnke Bridge, West Sonora Preble County, 1895, Over Swamp Creek. NRHP-listed?
29. Zeller-Smith Covered Bridge Pickerington, Fairfield County, 1906, also called Sycamore Park Covered Bridge. NRHP-listed?

Oregon

1. Thomas Creek-Gilkey Covered Bridge, Crabtree OR
2. Irish Bend Covered Bridge No. 14169, Corvallis OR
3. Thomas Creek-Shimanek Covered Bridge, Scio OR

Washington

1. Manning-Rye Covered Bridge, Colfax WA

--Doncram (talk) 22:18, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

It turned out there already were all the Oregon ones, thanks User:Finetooth, though not at the exact NRHP listing names. Thank you User:Bubba73 for helping a bit at Ohio University Lancaster historic bridges, which combined two Ohio bridges that had both been moved, and I think nicely sorts out their original and current locations. Created all the missing NRHP ones in California, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio. And I went on to create every other one as well.  :) Okay, done, well enough.  Done --Doncram (talk) 02:04, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

WLM 2018

I was surprised to see Wiki Loves Monuments - US is going again this year. See Commons. They say they've already got about 1,000 photos. Some of these might be showing up at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Unused images though there are lots of "I dunno's" clogging up that page already. I guess any help we can give them would be appreciated, and I know that any help they can give us - especially for sites not previously photographed - would be very much appreciated. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:34, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately they have now changed the format of the page, and even if there are several photos of the same monument only one photo is shown. This makes things complicated, I would not know how to find all of them to choose the best one.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:47, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

I can warmly recommend opening the list pages, and then using Dudemanfellabro's tool to assign the right picture. That tool offers choice between the tagged photos, but also photos that are in a tagged category. effeietsanders 20:30, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Great, thanks Lodewijk. Do you have a link to the tool? I have similar problems with other lists.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:59, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: User:Dudemanfellabra/AddCommonsCatLinks - it doesn't work for all countries, but here on enwiki it works for most. effeietsanders 21:36, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Btw, be careful: the category tags on Commons are in ~10-20% of the historical district wrong: they are on the wrong level (i.e. a commons category about a single building is tagged with the ID of a district). It requires some fixes on Commons to do it properly. What I like about this script, is that you actually find those errors by doing it manually but assisted. effeietsanders 21:37, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I will try. It will not solve similar problems on the Russian Wikivoyage, but I guess we can not just solve everything at the same time.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:33, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Texas Panhandle merger of county list-articles

Uppermost 5 rows of Texas counties had 84 NRHP listings in total, in Texas NRHPs map last updated January 1, 2016

Hey I plan to proceed to merge 26 currently separate list-articles for the Texas Panhandle into one National Register of Historic Places listings in the Texas Panhandle. They mostly have very few NRHP listings, and are better covered in one list-article where the GeoGroup linked map will show all their locations together. And readers will be well-served by a substantial list-article with a decent intro, etc., instead of disappointed to find nothing useful. Some time ago I spent some time trying to figure out a Texas-wide partition to make more groupings of its 252(?) counties into fewer list-articles, e.g. I think I considered using the state's economic development regions, but I failed to find a partition that would work well. Some groupings would include just too many NRHP listings. Perhaps only the panhandle is very clearly defined by wide consensus and is useful to merge for our purposes. Another option would be to merge all the singleton NRHP counties, and perhaps the doubleton ones, back into the Texas-wide NRHP list-article, but I think it is better to keep to coherent geographic regions as we do for our splits of big cities out of too-big counties elsewhere.

Note that the Texas State Historical Association defines the panhandle exactly the same, in its article in the Handbook of Texas online. Despite linked images there showing a bigger area, the text clearly defines it as exactly the 26 counties, specifically with the southern border of Swisher County, Texas on the bottom.

Pinging User:Magicpiano, about the fact that this will affect the operation of the NRHPPROGRESS updating script. I will plan to proceed by making the merger and then updating the Texas top-level list-article and the wp:NRHPPROGRESS page, and then I will let you know, and I understand it could still require some tweaking so the script still works. Let me know if I should do anything differently. Thanks by the way about updating the NRHPPROGRESS maps just now. --Doncram (talk) 23:08, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

I feel like we've had a lot of discussions on this page about this sort of thing, and have never quite settled on a consensus for how it should work. We should at least have another discussion about it if you're planning on going ahead with this, since as far as I know this would be the only list that groups listings within a state by geography. It seems reasonable enough in this specific case, just because Texas has so many small counties with few to no listings, though I'd at least leave Potter County separate. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:43, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

I agree that this should be discussed (more). I'm not opposed to it, but TheCatalyst31 is correct that this would be the first sub-state multi-county list. I don't believe this will have a significant effect on the progress page updating script, but it might have some unexpected effect on NationalRegisterBot, whose script has encoded some of the hierarchical structure of the list pages. If this goes forward, I would recommend creating the Panhandle list with only a small number of counties at first, after which I could work through the scripts for consequences. Magic♪piano 01:16, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Okay about discussing more. Sure, discuss away. The previous discussion about economic development regions of Texas was all me, no other commentators, at Talk:List of RHPs in TX.

I am not sure about whether there are other grouped listings extant or not in our list-article system. In fact I think there are numerous state list-articles which include the small-numbers-counties, unless adamant splitters have arrived and done their will everywhere. There used to be Georgia split alphabetically, e.g. into groupings of counties A-C, D-H, etc., which was unaesthetic as it grouped counties that were far away from each other, but those got split out to individual counties eventually. Hmm, List of RHPs in MN is one example with small counties included in the state-wide page. That is not perfectly optimal; it is in effect a grouping of geographically scattered counties.

I do believe there was a previous merger of NRHP list-articles for boroughs and census districts/non-boroughs in Alaska's panhandle. If I recall correctly there was contention / edit-warring there. I think I was supportive of the merger, but was not in the thick of the dispute, and I don't recall what argumments were put forward either way, except a bland, arbitrary-seeming-to-me assertion of "we don't ever do this" being made, if I recall correctly. I briefly looked for any discussion of that just before posting the above but didn't find anything to link to.

Here, for Texas panhandle, it comes up because I have been making some effort to create the articles for the one-listing counties, and it would be far more natural to be developing out a single list-article for the panhandle. And it is very well-defined. I think it can comfortably include Potter County, the one that has 32 current listings. --Doncram (talk) 01:52, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

P.S. The previous Alaska panhandle discussion seemed to me to be at consensus (or near-consensus) to group that way, per User:Reywas92's arguments, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 35#Individual county articles. User:Nyttend noted "By the way, note that Hawaii also goes by a structure that's not based on its counties, but there we split by island due to its unique geography and its unusual county government structure, where (with one exception) all islands are located in exactly one county" and commented "Finally, if these end up being merged somewhere, would someone please update the Skagway link at [list of fully illustrated articles]. Seems to me there was not adamant opposition to merger from anyone. But at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in the Alaska Panhandle, there is statement "This has been open for ages. No clear consensus for the merge so I undid it. --Multichill" which appears to me to be a practical decision at the time about the fact that incomplete implementation had left duplication in place, and User:Multichill was focused on technical aspects of fixing up the list-system and translating it to the German Wikipedia etc. Seems to have been the last word AFAICT; it seems unfortunate that Reywas92 implemented it imperfectly and was in effect rolled back. --Doncram (talk) 03:40, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Regional lists are simply a horrid idea. This is why we have statewide lists: either a county list should be freestanding, or it should be placed on the statewide list. Don't put it at some other place where people won't be expecting it. Nyttend (talk) 03:41, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Oh, hmm, I hoped there would be no objections, oh well.

I do agree that reader surprise, what people expect, matters, as part of designing overall reader experience. Unfortunately in the current system there is negative reader surprise when arriving from the Texas state-wide list-article to a county list-article like National Register of Historic Places listings in Childress County, Texas, which has just one item plus a lot of bureaucratic overhead like a statement that "The locations of National Register properties and districts may be seen in a mapping service provided", etc. Ugh. And the reader is probably surprised about the bureaucracy and about the fact they have to click again to get to the article on the one listing, i.e. to get to anything useful.

There might be bad ways to organize a Panhandle grouping approach, too. But please see this version of how the table of the state-wide list-article can work, with a new "region" column having just "Panhandle" entry for 26 relevant rows, and see how it links for, say, the Childress County item to its link target in the NRHPs in Texas Panhandle list-article. I think any reader arriving there would be just as happy as readers are arriving at any of List of RHPs in MN's sections for its small counties. Please scroll up and check out the "Map all coordinates using: OpenStreetMap" feature, which nicely shows the 84 or so listing locations (and happens to reveal that the coords for one listing are awfully wrong). Note I started a lede but it could be developed with some more overview comments. Arriving readers are happy to find useful context, to be able to compare Childress's one entry vs. other nearby ones.

On the other hand, the List of RHPs in MN readers will have a negative surprise when they click on their "Map of all coordinates" and puzzle out, perhaps, that it covers only listings in scattered counties, when they would naturally expect it would show all the NRHPs in the region (the state). They might be disgusted in fact if they figure that out how they were deceived. Not nearly as useful for seeing what is near what, e.g. for a possible photos contributor or anyone else interested in visiting listed buildings. While Panhandle visitors will be pleased at what they see. And someone could get around to making a map to include directly into the Panhandle list-article, like was done for the List of NHLs in TX, too. I think compact geographic organization makes a lot of sense to strive for.

Does this development address your concern about reader surprise, or could you possibly please expand on what else would be "horrid"? Sincerely, --Doncram (talk) 07:19, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm actually less convinced that this is a good idea after looking at the plan for the statewide list. Having a region column that would be blank for 90% of the state's counties looks really weird visually, and is going to make the reader wonder why the Panhandle is getting treated differently from the rest of Texas. (This is especially true when other parts of Texas have lots of small counties with few listings too, but don't fit in well-defined regions.) As for what you said above, that seems like a better argument for splitting out the rest of MN's small counties, or looking into ways to improve the "Map all coordinates" template, rather than merging the Texas counties. One- and two-listing articles aren't ideal, but in huge states like Texas they still feel like the best option. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:35, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

This could become a monumentally bad schema. Consider Oklahoma, West Virginia, Idaho, Vermont, Kentucky, etc etc etc. The schema proposed will be very confusing to the average reader because every state in some way will have a region, or panhandle etc etc. Why not just keep it per county and give the average reader a chance to follow a pattern that the majority of states will have? Just my observation, nothing moreCoal town guy (talk) 13:13, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi, thanks to several for your civil comments. Hey this is one specific proposal, it is not a general assertion that all states should be presented in regions; there simply are not generally accepted regional breakdowns of all states. Maybe a case for breaking out some states could be made, but let's just consider this Texas situation. So far, I think my proposal here with draft for the statewide list and for the Panhandle region is pretty good for readers. I am almost as much concerned for making it a better experience for editors. Texas is one of the states with least development, percentage-wise, I think because it is very frustrating/difficult to work on. I myself would have cruised through the Panhandle counties, if it were possible to see which ones they were. It is difficult for any reader or editor to get a handle on what the NRHP listings in the area are like. Unlike other states where counties have dozens or hundreds of listings, you can't browse through the nearby listings to see what kinds of things are historic and to work on all the, say courthouse ones, in any given area.

About the statewide list, I don't necessarily agree that readers would be bothered about the region being named for only one region. But, I suppose it could be better, given reaction/feedback. I think the draft state-wide table can be better developed to include regions for all the counties. I will develop it more using the econ development schema and will post again here soon. --Doncram (talk) 04:33, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Texas is one of the least articled states, but I don't think that has anything to do with how the lists are formatted. A lot of other southern/southwestern states with fewer counties are right down there with them and have been since WP:NRHPPROGRESS was created: New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, Mississippi, etc. I think that's more a function of where article writers live than anything else. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 13:03, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Everything we edit, falls in a data schema, example, US, US State, US State County, US City etc etc. A region is another name for a locality. AND as TheCatalyst31 states, it is where people live. AND since we have people everywhere, that is precisely how they would define a locality. 5 people, 5 definitions..Thats bad. That is a train wreck. Those 5 people would know the state, the county and the city and the town etc etc. BUT once you discuss localities, good luck. Data will be anywhere, there is no agreed upon definition of locality. Please, why shake the dice any further? We are here for ALL of the sites, not just Texas etc etc...Again, just my 2 cents. AND BONUS, if you make the regions, how many new editors will want to edit or understand our schema, ZERO. It will chase away folks.Coal town guy (talk) 13:13, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

I continue to support merges of any sort. There is no reason to have separate articles for counties with a very small number of sites, and even those with more sites do necessarily require splits. It is less reader-friendly to have content split between several short lists than to have them consolidated in a more useful longer list. Reywas92^Talk 01:24, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Thats swell, why dont you tell me all of the peoples names and addresses who will easily understand it? OH and by the way, whats your source on how to do the regions?Coal town guy (talk) 01:27, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Reywas92, and, hey, please hold the dismissals a bit until a proposal is more tangible. After further thought and browsing, I am leaning towards adopting the Texas Historical Commission's partition of the state into 10 regions. Per this webpage and this PDF map. The regions were originally defined by the Texas State Dept of Transportation back at time of Texas' 1968 World's Fair. Then adopted by the THC in the 1990s. These are very simple to understand: the state is partitioned into 10 regions by groupings of counties. The state produces brochures of its historic sites by region, e.g. this Plains region brochure for "Plains" which is somewhat larger than Texas Panhandle definition I was using. If we organize our coverage by these 10 regions, then it can match up to coverage of the rest of Texas' historic sites (their Texas Historic Landmarks and plaques and so on0, organized the same way. I notice the state-wide map and region brochures emphasize cities, not counties. No one wants to present this stuff narrowly by counties or even to show counties, besides us; I think few readers including few Texans know their 254 counties. I need a bit more time before I have a decent draft table for the statewide NRHP toplevel list-article and for one or two regions. But there is nothing difficult to understand about a grouping of counties. --Doncram (talk)

I doubt even most Texans, let alone non-Texans, are familiar with some of those regions. A few of them are well-known (like the Hill Country), but most of them seem like THC neologisms. South Texas is more desert than tropical, some of the names are very generic geography, and "Independence" just seems to mean the parts of the state where important events in the Texas Revolution happened. At least with counties people are likely to know the bigger ones and the ones in the regions they care about, and possibly more if they're into geography or travel. Nobody is going to know most of those regions. And I definitely disagree with the notion that nobody presents stuff by counties; the NPS lists properties by county in its weekly listings, which is why we do it in the first place, most maps still show them, and county lines are signed on major highways. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:20, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

AGAIN, the typical person from any of the lower 48 or Alaska or Hawaii will not know any of the regional attempts. Has the pellet yet fallen that because a few like the idea, it does not mean its a good idea?...It will be a bad idea that will confuse the average editor. The list will NOT be the same, thats why its a change because its not the same. The idea is horrible the implementation of a bad idea is usually worse. Sadly, your idea is not how everyone else will see it. Too bad so sad.Coal town guy (talk) 01:01, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Hey, if a reader knows the county they will use that and their experience will be identical to before. They will select the county name and jump to the county list-article. That just may be a section in a bigger list of all the county list-articles within a region. Just like the reader could arrive at a short county's list-article section on a statewide page. But now if they use the "map all coordinates" feature they will be pleasantly surprised/able to see all the NRHPs in the general area, not just the one or few in the county they drilled in on. And, many other readers will choose to arrive at the regional list-article coming from articles about the regions or otherwise deliberately arriving. I would be inclined to make 10 categories such as Category:National Register of Historic Places in Plains Trail Region, Texas (currently a redlink), and so readers would finally be able to navigate from a given article to see others in the region and to see the list-article for the region. Also on the state-wide list-article, the reader can sort by region and see what counties are in the region.

Right, few will know exactly those regions, but the regions are instantly understandable from the map. The map is currently available in THC's PDF file and in each of the 10 regional brochures, but I would count on the statewide map of regions and individual maps for each regions being produced and used directly in articles in the future.

Please recall that basically few readers know about counties' borders. Most people know cities and maybe rivers and highways and state borders, but not county borders. And we have never questioned whether readers are confused by subdivisions of counties, in the many list-articles we have for neighborhoods in Philadelphia, Denver, other cities. We do have other combinations of articles which have not been questioned: the Hawaii state list is not organized by counties but rather by island groupings, and the Puerto Rico's 78 municipalities are grouped into six tourist regions (which were set up once mostly by me with consultation with locals, perhaps originally in 4 regions if I recall correctly, then later modified by another local who found a more official regional breakdown to use).

Here, the Texas 10 regions are a pretty good breakdown of the state into coherent areas, understandable at a glance. In a breakdown that has been used for 50 years by the state already. And which is specifically chosen by the state historical association for purposes of explaining the state's historic resources (rather than chosen for economic development or more general tourism purposes). The historic preservation professionals there find it useful, and it seems to match our needs, and it is is really pretty good to have this partition available. --Doncram (talk) 04:42, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Alternatively the small counties could be merged to into National Register of Historic Places listings in Texas, just like National Register of Historic Places listings in Colorado and some of the other main state pages. Just because Texas has far too many counties doesn't mean having the counties with <=5 sites or whatever being on the state page would make it too big. I do like regions better though, like the Alaska Panhandle list I was trying for way back then. Reywas92^Talk 05:49, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

---

After looking at the arguments made here and at other related talk pages, I believe regional lists would cause more problems than it would solve. Doncram favors dividing the state into regional divisions based upon how the THC divides the state which are based on a system of highway tourist circuits the Texas Dept. of Transportation established half a century ago. TxDOT long ago abandoned promoting these routes other than maintaining their signage (page 153) and never grouped surrounding counties into regions around these routes. These travel trails were essentially set up as thematic short-vacation jaunts to encourage auto travel within the state, they never caught on with the public, and they are no longer marked on official TxDOT maps. Sites recommended by the THC within these regions do not necessarily represent NRHPs or even RTHLs but only sites open to the public including museums or park statues regardless of whether they are listed on any heritage registry whatsoever.

As TheCatalyst31 points out, the THC regions bear no semblance to how the general public would regionally define the location of a particular town or county, and the names are often ridiculous. Let's take their "Lakes Trail Region" as an example. This THC region is centered on the Dallas-Fort Worth metro and contains the state's largest lake, Texoma. Most of the other lakes are highly urbanized and surrounded by real estate developments. The state's largest natural lake, Caddo, is in the "Forest Trail Region" as are most of the state's larger reservoirs in relatively natural settings such as Sam Rayburn and Toledo Bend. The Lakes Trail Region also doesn't include the very popular Austin-area Highland Lakes such as Travis and Buchanan. The two lakes that are NPS recreational areas, Amistad and Meredith, aren't in the region either.

Although largely based on county lines, the THC rips Bexar County and San Antonio in half in order to find a way to include the Alamo in the "Independence Trail Region" while otherwise keeping them in the "Hill Country Trail Region". The state's best preserved/restored fort is Fort Davis Nat'l Hist. Site which is nowhere near the "Forts Trail Region". Indeed, if we are trying to use THC-defined regions for NRHP lists to somehow avoid confusion for readers, I think that users will instead wonder why settlers required Army protection from Native American conflicts in only a small portion of the state and why most of the historic places in such a list have nothing to do with forts.

Furthermore, there is no statewide consensus as to how to divide the state into regions within the general public or across state government. Besides the THC, TxDOT has their own map, the Comptroller's office has their map, the state tourism board has their map, and the Dept. of Public Safety has different maps for highway patrol divisions and for Texas Rangers. I wouldn't be surprised if the Treasury, Dept. of Agriculture, General Land Office, and Railroad Commission all have different maps.

WikiProject:U.S. Roads tried in the past to divide Farm to Market Road lists by region, too, based upon this map. Although those regional lists were never completed due to the difficulty, they still remain even though the project has chosen to list them numerically instead (see List of Farm to Market Roads in Texas). Similarly, a discussion about regions at Wikivoyage has been an unresolved can of worms. Please scroll the whole page as there are several threads about regions and subregions on that talk page. Apparently, Wikivoyage editors are living for the time being with a really crappy map by any standards even though they have a far greater need for regionalization than we ever will here at Wikipedia. Another problem with regional listings is there is invariably a large imbalance in the number of listings in each regional scheme. As a general rule, rural eastern counties have many more historic sites than rural western ones.

Many here don't like the idea of listing counties with only a small number of NRHPs on the statewide page because of the limited map it would create. Although I would settle for this as a compromise, I'm not keen on the idea for the same reason.

The last option seems to be to do nothing and leave each county with its own list article even if it has very few NRHPs. This is the option I prefer for now. If a county has only one NRHP presently, so what? An example used above was National Register of Historic Places listings in Childress County, Texas with the claim that the info before the site table "has a lot of bureaucratic overhead". I don't buy it. The article lead is only three sentences, and if the GeoGroup template with the statement about locations being available in provided mapping services are too much, then simply remove them with HTML comment tags so they can be restored when more NRHPs are locally designated. They're not needed since the table already has linked coordinates. Please note that in the map at the top of this discussion thread, Childress County is shown as having no NRHPs since the map is over two years out of date. If you want more regional context to the page then add a navbox to surrounding counties such as at the bottom of National Register of Historic Places listings in Guadalupe County, Texas. In the case of the previously mentioned Potter County, I would not object to an Amarillo list article for more context since the Potter-Randall county line bisects the city which has NRHPs in both counties.

Most of the NRHPs in the state fall into certain basic categories: residential or commercial historic districts, some settler's log cabin, some businessman's ornate Victorian or Queen Anne-style home, or a Revival-style commercial building, church, school, or government building. These are universal and don't require any local context. If a site needs to be grouped with related sites outside the county, we have list articles such as List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Texas or National Register of Historic Places listings in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Speaking specifically to the Panhandle, WP:U.S. Roads has a U.S. Route 66 Task Force intended to extend the scope of its coverage beyond the former route to also include historic sites, towns, people, and culture related to the route. Such a multi-project collaboration seems to me a much more meaningful way to incorporate local sites in a regional context than arbitrary "regions" that no one agrees upon or understands. Fortguy (talk) 09:07, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

So now that I'm late to the party, I'll add in my thoughts on this whole discussion. I've always felt the state lists holding the counties with smaller NRHP site counts would the best way to go. It saves on bulk and consolidates traffic more into one location versus splitting traffic into many smaller pages. The issue with the map showing a piecemeal grouping of sites can and has been worked around before. See the Wiki Loves Monuments map [1]. It doesn't discriminate by page, piling all sites into one map, which can be pared down to sites with and without images. I've felt that this map should be the default map for all the pages, but it's maintenance hasn't always been a priority.

Now grouping sites back into geographic location seems like an interesting proposal, but, as a Texan, I would also agree that the naming convention varies too much to be useful to anyone except those that know the local terminology already. My example here is the National Register of Historic Places in Jefferson County, Kentucky. As someone that's never been to Kentucky, I have no idea what the divisions for that county's subgroupings look like. I've worked on adding new locations to that county before, and it took considerable research to first find out what each section represented and then taking the new location and hopefully plugging it into it's proper subpage. Someone just perusing the subpages for sites would find it useful, but someone trying to find, for example the Quitaque Railway Tunnel, would be hard-pressed to know if its in the Texas Panhandle, the Texas South Plains, the Llano Estacado, the Caprock Escarpment, or something else (FYI it's in the last 3, and 3 miles from a Panhandle county).

On one final note, @Fortguy has been going through all the Texas counties, updating the lead wording, and adding updated notation and Texas historic declarations to all the sites, and doing a wonderful job! I would suggest waiting with Texas until they are finished with the updates, so we're not tearing apart their work. And once I'm back from paternity leave, I will update the Texas map with the correct numbers. 25or6to4 (talk) 03:17, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Yea! It's so good to hear from you again, 25or6to4! Congrats on your new bundle of joy. When you do get around to updating the map, please let me make this suggestion. SVG allows path elements to have id and class attributes just like HTML/XHTML. If you could assign class attributes with county names as values to the individual paths that define the boundaries of each county (it would have to be classes as ids can't be used if a county contains more than one path such as coastal counties with islands) and then use a CSS style declaration in the head section of the SVG file, that would be enormously helpful. An example would be <path class="Fort_Bend" ...blah... /> with the fill attribute defined in the head element's style sub-element. Then the style element would contain a list of each county such as #Fort_Bend {fill:#[legend color]} and include in that style declaration the number and number-position of the NRHPs of each county. This would allow the map to be much more human-editable without the need of special applications like Inkscape to keep it updated. An example of such an easily editable map is File:Same-sex marriage in Mexico.svg although that map doesn't have any positioned text such as the numbers on our map. I would hope that this could be a solution that would help the map be updated much more frequently. Your thoughts on this? Fortguy (talk) 06:44, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Reywas92, User:Fortguy, and User:25or6to4 for your considering the issues here and offering your relatively more Texian views, but I feel I oughta say that what you contribute really results in a shitty impasse which hurts development of Texas coverage. In generalities which might not be perfectly fair, y'all have shown preference for local familiarity to disdain any decent geographical system. I don't particularly care about the THC system, which y'all have ridiculed. Fine, whatever, there. But it is a matter of professional editing for any Texas tourism guidebook or any other coverage of Texas by any other purpose, to divide it in some way other than by 254 counties. Check out any Texas guidebook. Traveltexas.com, for example, breaks it into 7 regions, which might or might not survive your impulse to ridicule. But they and every other professional presenter of information about Texas (which does not include WikiVoyage IMHO) finds it necessary to adopt or impose some regional breakdown of the state, because it is effing unreasonable to "break it down" by 254 counties. And dividing the counties alphabetically, as has been done so far by List of Recorded Texas Historic Landmarks, is effing ridiculous. Likewise effing ridiculous is to divide the state for NRHP purposes by "those counties having just 1 (or 2)" vs. individual counties at the current moment having more than 1 (or 2) NRHPs", which surely will not match up at all to some approach for dividing the Recorded Texas Historic Landmarks into counties having 1 or 2 or whatever. Right at this moment, I am not sure about any way forward. Thanks anyhow for sabotaging one decent approach forward. I sincerely don't mean to imply that y'all don't have good intentions. :) Perhaps a way forward might be some Texas oriented RFC that is less bound to Wikiproject NRHP. --Doncram (talk) 03:44, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

You are most welcome that we cant understand a really bad idea or data schema to abide by what you want. Look again, this is not about loaded language or sabotage, this is about an approachable system to edit. Is the schema good,sure....to you. Disagreement is not sabotage. Nor is the backhanded shit eating grin of course implying we have good intentions. Sorry to let you downCoal town guy talk 14:22, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

I think you misinterpret me as being sarcastic about good intentions. I am absolutely sincere that I believe the various participants here as being honestly well-intentioned. But here, as with many group decisions in WikiProject NRHP and in many other organizations, there is a collective failure. That is really pretty normal for organizations. Right, I am disappointed, because I put some effort into figuring out a decent, workable system which I think would benefit all, but it looks to me that I "lost" this particular discussion because of, in effect, sand kicked up. I do hope that a properly organized RFC with involvement of, well, uninvolved editors, might work better, sometime.

Coal town guy, about your specific objection that regional list-articles would not be "an approachable system to edit", I see that as entirely incorrect. It would be far more approachable, especially for any reader or editor interested in the more remote locations. It is very impractical for anyone to figure out which are the most remote, isolated places now, while a regional map would expose them very directly. If you think that there would be any more work involved in maintaining the system, that is entirely not the case. It would provide essentially no change for an editor who was and remains county-focused. It would be welcome and helpful for any editor/reader who has any interest in the geographic locations, e.g. for possibly considering whether to drive and get photos for a bunch of them. --Doncram (talk) 00:56, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

I get where you are coming from but I will; agree to disagree. I know of NO map that says hey, this is remote. I know maps that have place names and depending on their age, you get to figure out how accurate they are. As to determining what might be better to get pics of in remote places, I always find this old technology called an Atlas to be mighty handy. Once you calculate a route with a direct route and most hits, you travel. Been there and done that. To the best of my knowledge, we are here to be an encyclopedia, not replace google maps or tell the world whats better or help a few editors do whats better. Its about our community of editors who may or may not know. In all candor, I have never relied on Wikipedia for a specific geographic mapping location, I use maps. Its alot faster and if you are actually remote, NO CELL, BAD SATELLITE etc etc use a map, they do work.Coal town guy talk 20:10, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

System of editing, as to data schema, this is a chimp on acid in a red room chasing a chicken coated in mercury. Sorry, this effort is being done to make certain editors do what they believe to be good and pretty much tell the community at large they suck and you dont...You have to formulate an idea that all users can use. Otherwise, it sucks. AND you will be told that by many many peopleCoal town guy talk 20:14, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Well, the "map of all links" in the drafted Panhandle/Plains region NRHP list shows clearly that Hutchinson County Courthouse and Lipscomb County Courthouse and Plainview Hardware Company Building and Route 66 Bridge over the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railroad are located very remotely from one another and from any other NRHPs in the big region. While the "map of all links" in National Register of Historic Places listings in Hutchinson County, Texas and all other single-coordinates "list-articles", provides zero, zip, nada information about their site's relationship to any other NRHPs. It could be relatively easy to get a pic of the Route 66 Bridge, if you knew about it from a regional map, because it is just off I-40, but you wouldn't know about it or any other locations hidden away in single- or few-coordinates "list-articles". About use of an old-fashioned atlas, yes, sure I am marking one up now before heading off on a trip through some remote areas, because my phone won't work there, but it sure is a big help to have the "map of all coordinates" available for some big counties (big in number of NRHPs as well as geographical area) that I am going through. Too bad for Texas. --Doncram (talk) 23:37, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

This focus on mapping confuses me, because this is an encyclopedia, not a mapping application. When I want to map disparate listings together, I use a mapping application (Google My Maps) to functionally merge KML files exported from individual WP lists into a single map. This is a technique that works without regard to how WP groups things (or how you think it should), and is not something I expect WP to facilitate more than it does today. Anyone who really wants to know what things are near each other can do the same. (I've used this technique to create maps for trips from 500 to over 5,000 miles, spanning nearly the width of the lower 48 and containing hundreds of points.) If mapping is the only reason to do this sort of merging, I don't really see the need; it won't help me. Magic♪piano 23:13, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

User:Magicpiano, can you possibly please expand on this, because I think it sounds useful for me and other NRHP editors. Perhaps we could put some tips into wp:NRHPHELP about how to do whatever you do.

But, based on what you say, you have to get KML lists, which I see one can download from any "Map of all coordinates". For a drive through the Texas panhandle/plains region, that would require you know all the Texas counties there and go to each separate page, many with just one or two items, and get a separate KML list, which is crazy. It would be highly reasonable to go to one Texas panhandle/plains page for that. So it seems that this would help you. And there's no reason the NRHP list-article system can't be allowed to support this application that you suggest. --Doncram (talk) 03:38, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

For a drive across the country (or 3/4 of its width, as I did last year, touching 15 states), you have to download lots of KML files no matter what. Regardless of WP's organization, you still have to figure out which lists to download; this is a basic mapreading skill. While it may seem like more work in rural places, I have an obvious bias to guide decision making: I choose counties that have a low percentage of images as places to try to focus on, for which the progress maps come in handy, and on those near major roads. Downloading KML files is not hard, and you only have to repeat it when the list content changes. Loading them into Google My Maps is not hard: create a layer, import it into the layer. If you're worried about large numbers of layers (My Maps I think has limits, other similar tools may not), combine the content of some of the KML files in a text editor first. The latter requires a basic understanding of the structure of KML files, which you can read about elsewhere, and is not logistically complex for someone versed in XML. All of this is a fraction of my prep time for such a trip; most prep time is spent making sure I have descriptions and reasonably accurate geolocations for listings I may drive past, and identifying non-NRHP things to add to the map.

An arguably useful item would be a tool that takes multiple articles and combines their geolocation information into a single KML. This would have broader application than just this project. Magic♪piano 15:01, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Salt Lake City now fully illustrated

I just added the last 7 photos to National Register of Historic Places listings in Salt Lake City. That's 218 out of 218 illustrated. A lot of people have worked on this one over the years. Ntsimp (talk) 18:33, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Like ---Another Believer _(Talk) 21:43, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Wow, that is quite an accomplishment! I've worked with counties with as few as four NRHP sites, and have one that is unobtainable. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:42, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Well done! No small accomplishment with how many listings Salt Lake City has. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:09, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes, great job! It seems you are lucky or really good somehow, in getting photos for all. It has gotten harder to completely illustrate big list-articles, where there are cases of demolished-but-still-listed properties, as happens once or a few times for the nearby Utah County list-article, where no historic pics have yet been found for one or a few cases. Or maybe you have successfully dug out historic pics in some such cases? (I see a historic pic used for Frederick A.E. Meyer House.) Or, hmm, I think I recall you recently mentioning having corresponded with the state SHPO to get demolished places delisted, and having that actually work, eventually. Wow then, completing out this list-article is all the more to your credit. :)

P.S. I bet it has been helpful to have a linked "map of all coordinates", in process of getting to all the places in the area. :)--Doncram (talk) 20:04, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Salt Lake City's near-cartesian grid plan makes latitude and longitude less important, but the grouping into neighborhoods definitely helped with some of my planning. Again, this is a big group effort; I just finished it. Ntsimp (talk) 23:31, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Looks good except for the over-exposed photo for Altadena Apartments. Chris857 (talk) 03:00, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Outstanding! Congratulations. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:50, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Embedding

A discussion of potential interest to members of WPNRHP is taking place at Template talk:Infobox aircraft occurrence#Embedding. — Ipoellet (talk) 17:51, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Judges needed for WLM-US 2018

Hi folks - I'm Kevin, one of the organizers of Wiki Loves Monuments in the United States. First, wanted to say you all do amazing work on Wikipedia, and WLM-US wouldn't be very fruitful without all you project members who both upload and place photos on Wikipedia during the campaign. With that being said, WLM is wrapping up and we're about to enter our judging period that lasts through the month of October, and I figure it's fitting to invite members of WP NRHP to help judge if they're interested.

We had a great turnout this year, with over 1,900 individuals uploading over 10,000 photos through September. Our judging process involves 3 rounds of judging by community members; an overview of the timeline can be seen here.

Before judging begins, there's a pre-jury process where the organizers quickly cull several thousand lower-quality images, unexceptional images of commonly photographed sites, images of signs, things like that. After that, Round 1 of judging begins, which involves each judge judging a good chunk of photos over a ~2 week period (last year was ~1,700 photos per judge - hoping to bring that number down this year). It sounds like a lot, but it's a quick yes/no to each photo on whether or not it should continue to the later rounds. When broken up over time, it's not too bad - and the more people that pitch in for Round 1, the less work it is for each person. Round 2 is more refined, with each judge reviewing < 500 photos on a 1-5 scale. Finally, with Round 3, judges rank the top few dozen photos to determine the top 10.

We're especially in need of folks to help out with Round 1, but we invite project members to be a part of Rounds 2 and 3 as well (judges can participate in multiple rounds). All judges will receive some swag (t-shirt, stickers). If you'd be interested, please respond here or reach out to me via email - we'll get you set up and send you more details soon. Thank you very much! ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 07:53, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

P.S. Worth mentioning, judges naturally won't be eligible to win the contest if they have submitted photos. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 07:55, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

I entered a few photos, but I don't think they're realistically in the running anyway. I'd love to help. Ntsimp (talk) 13:17, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

@Ntsimp: Great, thank you! Our jury communication takes place via email, so I've gone ahead and sent you one. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 15:54, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

North Coast Casket Company Building

Should North Coast Casket Company Building be moved to the "Former listings" section of National Register of Historic Places listings in Snohomish County, Washington? ---Another Believer _(Talk) 19:53, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Demolished buildings remain listed until they are formally delisted. (You might propose to the Washington SHPO that it be delisted.) Magic♪piano 21:36, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

RS

Looking for more input at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#National_Park_Service, about a source for Falcon Rest, a historic house in Warren County, Tennessee. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:30, 3 October 2018 (UTC)